Looking for Reasons behind Success in Dealing with Requirements Change

During development, requirements of software systems are subject to change. Unfortunately, managing changing requirements can take a lot of time and effort. Yet some companies show a better management of changes in requirements than others. Why? What is it that makes some projects deal with changing requirements better than others? We pursue the long term goal of understanding the mechanisms used to successfully deal with change in requirements. In this paper we gather knowledge about the state-of-the-art and the state-of-practice. We studied eight software development projects in four different companies --large and small, inclined toward structured and toward agile principles of development--, interviewing their project managers and analyzing their answers. Our findings include a list of practical (rather than theoretical) factors affecting the ability to cope with small changes in requirements. Results suggest a central role of size as a factor determining the flexibility showed either by the organization or by the software development team. We report the research method used and validate our results via expert interviews, who could relate to our findings

Towards a philosophical understanding of agile software methodologies : the case of Kuhn versus Popper

This dissertation is original in using the contrasting ideas of two leading 20th century philosophers of science, Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, to provide a philosophical understanding, firstly, of the shift from traditional software methodologies to the so-called Agile methodologies, and, secondly, of the values, principles and practices underlying the most prominent of the Agile methodologies, Extreme Programming (XP). This dissertation will take a revisionist approach, following Fuller—the founder of social epistemology—in reading Popper against Kuhn's epistemological hegemony. The investigations in this dissertation relate to two main branches of philosophy— epistemology and ethics. The epistemological part of this dissertation compares both Kuhn and Popper's alternative ideas of the development of scientific knowledge to the Agile methodologists' ideas of the development of software, in order to assess the extent to which Agile software development resembles a scientific discipline. The investigations relating to ethics in this dissertation transfer concepts from social engineering—in particular, Popper's distinction between piecemeal and utopian social engineering—to software engineering, in order to assess both the democratic and authoritarian aspects of Agile software development and management. The use of Kuhn's ideas of scientific revolutions and paradigm shift by several leading figures of the Agile software methodologies—most notably, Kent Beck, the leader of the most prominent Agile software methodology, Extreme Programming (XP)—to predict a fundamental shift from traditional to Agile software methodologies, is critically assessed in this dissertation. A systematic investigation into whether Kuhn's theory as a whole, can provide an adequate account of the day-to-day practice of Agile software development is also provided. As an alternative to the use of Kuhn's ideas, the critical rationalist philosophy of Karl Popper is investigated. On the one hand, this dissertation assesses whether the epistemological aspects of Popper's philosophy—especially his notions of falsificationism, evolutionary epistemology, and three worlds metaphysics—provide a suitable framework for understanding the philosophical basis of everyday Agile software development. On the other hand, the aspects of Popper's philosophy relating to ethics, which provide an ideal for scientific practice in an open society, are investigated in order to determine whether they coincide with the avowedly democratic values of Agile software methodologies. The investigations in this dissertation led to the following conclusions. Firstly, Kuhn's ideas are useful in predicting the effects of the full-scale adoption of Agile methodologies, and they describe the way in which several leaders of the Agile methodologies promote their methodologies; they do not, however, account for the detailed methodological practice of Agile software development. Secondly, several aspects of Popper's philosophy, were found to be aligned with several aspects of Agile software development. In relation to epistemology, Popper's principle of falsificationism provides a criterion for understanding the rational and scientific basis of several Agile principles and practices, his evolutionary epistemology resembles the iterative-incremental design approach of Agile methodologies, and his three worlds metaphysical model provides an understanding of both the nature of software, and the approach advocated by the Agile methodologists' of creating and sharing knowledge. In relation to ethics, Popper's notion of an open society provides an understanding of the rational and ethical basis of the values underlying Agile software development and management, as well as the piecemeal adoption of Agile software methodologies.Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2009.Computer Scienceunrestricte

Communication Patterns and Strategies in Software Development Communities of Practice

Some of the greatest challenges in the relatively new field of software development lie in the decidedly old technology of communication between humans. Software projects require sophisticated and varied communication skills because software developers work in a world of incomplete, imperfect information where teams evolve rapidly in response to evolving requirements and changing collaborators. While prescriptive models for software process such as Agile suggest ways of doing, in reality these codified practices must adapt to the complexities of a real workplace. Patterns, rather than rules of behavior within software process are more suitable to the varied and mutable nature of software development. Software development communities are also learning communities, attempting to sustain themselves through internal ambiguity and external changes. We study different types of software development communities to fulfill our goal of understanding how these communities implement and evolve different communication strategies to sustain themselves through change. We observe student software development projects, open source software development, and a professional, rigorously Agile software development community. We employ Wenger\u27s concept of Community of Practice to frame our understanding, especially focusing on the notions of identity, participation, reification, negotiation of meaning and trajectory of the participants of the software development communities. From these different sources, we identify the emergent themes of mentoring and knowledge management as critical for sustainable communities. Through our long running, immersive, participant observer, ethnographic study of the Agile software development community, we contribute both a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the their communication practices and depict the evolving nature of their onboarding and mentoring strategies. We share our experience of implementing such an immersive industry ethnographic study. We employ a pattern language approach to capturing, analyzing and representing our results, thereby contributing and relating to the larger bodies of work in Scrum and Organizational Patterns. This work also informs our concurrent efforts to enhance our undergraduate computer science and software engineering curriculum, exposing students to the communication challenges of real software development and help them to develop skills to meet these challenges through practice in inquiry, critique and reflection

Empirical Investigation on Agile Methods Usage: Issues Identified from Early Adopters in Malaysia

Agile Methods are a set of software practices that can help to produce products faster and at the same time deliver what customers want. Despite the benefits that Agile methods can deliver, however, we found few studies from the Southeast Asia region, particularly Malaysia. As a result, less empirical evidence can be obtained in the country making its implementation harder. To use a new method, experience from other practitioners is critical, which describes what is important, what is possible and what is not possible concerning Agile. We conducted a qualitative study to understand the issues faced by early adopters in Malaysia where Agile methods are still relatively new. The initial study involves 13 participants including project managers, CEOs, founders and software developers from seven organisations. Our study has shown that social and human aspects are important when using Agile methods. While technical aspects have always been considered to exist in software development, we found these factors to be less important when using Agile methods. The results obtained can serve as guidelines to practitioners in the country and the neighbouring regions

Software systems engineering: a journey to contemporary agile and beyond, do people matter?

publishedVersio

Bridging the gap between research and agile practice: an evolutionary model

There is wide acceptance in the software engineering field that industry and research can gain significantly from each other and there have been several initiatives to encourage collaboration between the two. However there are some often-quoted challenges in this kind of collaboration. For example, that the timescales of research and practice are incompatible, that research is not seen as relevant for practice, and that research demands a different kind of rigour than practice supports. These are complex challenges that are not always easy to overcome. Since the beginning of 2013 we have been using an approach designed to address some of these challenges and to bridge the gap between research and practice, specifically in the agile software development arena. So far we have collaborated successfully with three partners and have investigated three practitioner-driven challenges with agile. The model of collaboration that we adopted has evolved with the lessons learned in the first two collaborations and been modified for the third. In this paper we introduce the collaboration model, discuss how it addresses the collaboration challenges between research and practice and how it has evolved, and describe the lessons learned from our experience

Boundary Objects and their Use in Agile Systems Engineering

Agile methods are increasingly introduced in automotive companies in the attempt to become more efficient and flexible in the system development. The adoption of agile practices influences communication between stakeholders, but also makes companies rethink the management of artifacts and documentation like requirements, safety compliance documents, and architecture models. Practitioners aim to reduce irrelevant documentation, but face a lack of guidance to determine what artifacts are needed and how they should be managed. This paper presents artifacts, challenges, guidelines, and practices for the continuous management of systems engineering artifacts in automotive based on a theoretical and empirical understanding of the topic. In collaboration with 53 practitioners from six automotive companies, we conducted a design-science study involving interviews, a questionnaire, focus groups, and practical data analysis of a systems engineering tool. The guidelines suggest the distinction between artifacts that are shared among different actors in a company (boundary objects) and those that are used within a team (locally relevant artifacts). We propose an analysis approach to identify boundary objects and three practices to manage systems engineering artifacts in industry

Non-Technical Individual Skills are Weakly Connected to the Maturity of Agile Practices

Context: Existing knowledge in agile software development suggests that individual competency (e.g. skills) is a critical success factor for agile projects. While assuming that technical skills are important for every kind of software development project, many researchers suggest that non-technical individual skills are especially important in agile software development. Objective: In this paper, we investigate whether non-technical individual skills can predict the use of agile practices. Method: Through creating a set of multiple linear regression models using a total of 113 participants from agile teams in six software development organizations from The Netherlands and Brazil, we analyzed the predictive power of non-technical individual skills in relation to agile practices. Results: The results show that there is surprisingly low power in using non-technical individual skills to predict (i.e. explain variance in) the mature use of agile practices in software development. Conclusions: Therefore, we conclude that looking at non-technical individual skills is not the optimal level of analysis when trying to understand, and explain, the mature use of agile practices in the software development context. We argue that it is more important to focus on the non-technical skills as a team-level capacity instead of assuring that all individuals possess such skills when understanding the use of the agile practices.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur

Software systems engineering: a journey to contemporary agile and beyond, do people matter?

It is fascinating to view the evolution of software systems engineering over the decades. At the first glance, it could be perceived that the various approaches and processes are different. Are they indeed different? This paper will briefly discuss such a journey relating to findings from an empirical study in some organisations in the UK. Some of the issues described in the literature and by practitioners are common across different software system engineering approaches over the time. It can be argued that human-element of software development plays an integral part in the success of software systems development endeavour. After all, software engineering is a human-centric craft. In order to understand such issues, we crossed the discipline to other disciplines in order to adapt theories and principles that will help to better understand and tackle such matter. Other disciplines have well established human related theories and principles that can be useful. From Japanese management philosophies, we have adapted Lean and knowledge management theories. From psychology, we have adapted Emotional Intelligence (EI). With such an interdisciplinary view, some of the issues can be addressed adequately. Which bring the question: is it really the process or the people? The second author will reflect on his experience attending the first SQM conference 25 years ago. The reflection will discuss the evolution of software systems engineering, and what was changed since then, if at all changed